229 research outputs found
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On the computational complexity of sequence design problems
Inverse protein folding concerns the identification of an amino acid sequence that folds to a given structure. Sequence design problems attempt to avoid the apparent difficulty of inverse protein folding by defining an energy that can be minimized to find protein-like sequences. The authors evaluate the practical relevance of two sequence design problems by analyzing their computation complexity. They show that the canonical method of sequence design is intractable, and describe approximation algorithms for this problem. The authors also describe an efficient algorithm that exactly solves the grand canonical method. The analysis shows how sequence design problems can fail to reduce the difficulty of the inverse protein folding problem, and highlights the need to analyze these problems to evaluate their practical relevance
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Lattice and off-lattice side chain models of protein folding: Linear time structure prediction better than 86% of optimal
This paper considers the protein structure prediction problem for lattice and off-lattice protein folding models that explicitly represent side chains. Lattice models of proteins have proven extremely useful tools for reasoning about protein folding in unrestricted continuous space through analogy. This paper provides the first illustration of how rigorous algorithmic analyses of lattice models can lead to rigorous algorithmic analyses of off-lattice models. The authors consider two side chain models: a lattice model that generalizes the HP model (Dill 85) to explicitly represent side chains on the cubic lattice, and a new off-lattice model, the HP Tangent Spheres Side Chain model (HP-TSSC), that generalizes this model further by representing the backbone and side chains of proteins with tangent spheres. They describe algorithms for both of these models with mathematically guaranteed error bounds. In particular, the authors describe a linear time performance guaranteed approximation algorithm for the HP side chain model that constructs conformations whose energy is better than 865 of optimal in a face centered cubic lattice, and they demonstrate how this provides a 70% performance guarantee for the HP-TSSC model. This is the first algorithm in the literature for off-lattice protein structure prediction that has a rigorous performance guarantee. The analysis of the HP-TSSC model builds off of the work of Dancik and Hannenhalli who have developed a 16/30 approximation algorithm for the HP model on the hexagonal close packed lattice. Further, the analysis provides a mathematical methodology for transferring performance guarantees on lattices to off-lattice models. These results partially answer the open question of Karplus et al. concerning the complexity of protein folding models that include side chains
FILM GROWTH ON ALUMINUM IN HIGH-TEMPERATURE WATER
Film growths on aluminum and two aluminum-1 wt.% nickel alloys in water at 250 and 350 deg C were studied. It was found that oxide growth does not advance on a uniform front but, to the contrary, the advancing surface contains many outcrops in the form of thin platelets, chunky outcrops, and whiskers. With both the pure metal and the alloys considerable intergranular attack was observed. The general corrosion product was usually more uniform in crystal size when formed on the pure metal, but variations in crystal size were observed on both aluminum and alloys with varying features of the metal surface. The roughness of the general oxide surface (includlng outcrops) was found to increase rapidly to about 0.2 micron and then remain relatively constant with increasing film thickness. The composition of films formed under all investigated conditions, except one, was found to be boehmite ( alpha -Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/- H/sub 2/O). This exception was films carried by the alloy specimens after testing for 32 days at 350 deg C. In this case the main corrosion film was still boehmite, but in addition the outer surface supported long needles of diaspore ( beta -Al/sub 2/ O/sub 3/- H/sub 2/O). (auth
Design and Operation of Gravity or Surface Systems (Chapter 13)
Surface irrigation uses open channel flow to spread water over a field.
The driving force in such systems is gravity and hence the alternate term,
gravity flooding. Once distributed over the surface of the field and after it has
entered the soil, water is often redistributed by forces other than gravity.
Surface irrigation systems generally require a smaller initial investment
than do other types of irrigation systems. However, this is not always the
case, especially if extensive land forming is needed for an efficient system. In
fact, the need for extensive land forming is one of the main reasons why other
types of irrigation systems have been developed
Thermodynamics of Large-N_f QCD at Finite Chemical Potential
We extend the previously obtained results for the thermodynamic potential of
hot QCD in the limit of large number of fermions to non-vanishing chemical
potential. We give exact results for the thermal pressure in the entire range
of temperature and chemical potential for which the presence of a Landau pole
is negligible numerically. In addition we compute linear and non-linear quark
susceptibilities at zero chemical potential, and the entropy at small
temperatures. We compare with the available perturbative results and determine
their range of applicability. Our numerical accuracy is sufficiently high to
check and verify existing results, including the recent perturbative results by
Vuorinen on quark number susceptibilities and the older results by Freedman and
McLerran on the pressure at zero temperature and high chemical potential. We
also obtain a number of perturbative coefficients at sixth order in the
coupling that have not yet been calculated analytically. In the case of both
non-zero temperature and non-zero chemical potential, we investigate the range
of validity of a scaling behaviour noticed recently in lattice calculations by
Fodor, Katz, and Szabo at moderately large chemical potential and find that it
breaks down rather abruptly at , which points to a
presumably generic obstruction for extrapolating data from small to large
chemical potential. At sufficiently small temperatures , we find
dominating non-Fermi-liquid contributions to the interaction part of the
entropy, which exhibits strong nonlinearity in the temperature and an excess
over the free-theory value.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, JHEP style; v2: several updates, rewritten and
extended sect. 3.4 covering now "Entropy at small temperatures and
non-Fermi-liquid behaviour"; v3: additional remarks at the end of sect. 3.4;
v4: minor corrections and additions (version to appear in JHEP
BAs and boride III-V alloys
Boron arsenide, the typically-ignored member of the III-V arsenide series
BAs-AlAs-GaAs-InAs is found to resemble silicon electronically: its Gamma
conduction band minimum is p-like (Gamma_15), not s-like (Gamma_1c), it has an
X_1c-like indirect band gap, and its bond charge is distributed almost equally
on the two atoms in the unit cell, exhibiting nearly perfect covalency. The
reasons for these are tracked down to the anomalously low atomic p orbital
energy in the boron and to the unusually strong s-s repulsion in BAs relative
to most other III-V compounds. We find unexpected valence band offsets of BAs
with respect to GaAs and AlAs. The valence band maximum (VBM) of BAs is
significantly higher than that of AlAs, despite the much smaller bond length of
BAs, and the VBM of GaAs is only slightly higher than in BAs. These effects
result from the unusually strong mixing of the cation and anion states at the
VBM. For the BAs-GaAs alloys, we find (i) a relatively small (~3.5 eV) and
composition-independent band gap bowing. This means that while addition of
small amounts of nitrogen to GaAs lowers the gap, addition of small amounts of
boron to GaAs raises the gap (ii) boron ``semi-localized'' states in the
conduction band (similar to those in GaN-GaAs alloys), and (iii) bulk mixing
enthalpies which are smaller than in GaN-GaAs alloys. The unique features of
boride III-V alloys offer new opportunities in band gap engineering.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, 61 references. Accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev. B. Scheduled to appear Oct. 15 200
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